At the time of his sentencing, Judge Michael Russo said: “There is no place in this city, there is no place in this country, there is no place in this world for those who enslave others.”

The women were found in May, when one managed to escape and raise the alarm.

Ariel Castro during his trial (Getty Images)

Miss Knight had been snatched by Castro, a former bus driver, when she was 21. Chained and starved, she was beaten and raped, miscarrying his child five times. She was joined over the years by two further women, Miss Berry, kidnapped aged 16, and Miss DeJesus, then 14.

Miss Berry and Miss DeJesus could not bear to be in the court for the trial. But Miss Knight delivered an emotional statement.

“My name is Michelle Knight,” she told the court, her back to Castro, looking straight ahead.

“After 11 years I am finally being heard, and it’s liberating.

“Writing this statement gave me the strength to be a stronger woman and to know that there is more good than evil.”

Speaking at first in a soft, girlish voice, she quavered at the mention of her son – who was aged two and a half when she was abducted. Her son, born after she was raped at school, had been taken away from her by the social services in the weeks before she was abducted.

“I look inside my heart and I see my son and I cried every night,” she said. “Christmas was a most traumatic day because I could not spend it with my son.”

“Ariel Castro, I remember all the times you came home and talked about other things and said at least I didn’t kill you,” she said. “You took 11 years of my life away and I have got it back. I spent 11 years in hell and now your hell is just beginning.”

The death penalty, she said, would be too good for him.

The exterior of the house where the three kidnapped women were found alive on May 7, 2013 in Cleveland, Ohio (Getty Images)

Castro’s case caused revulsion in Cleveland – a rough and ready industrial town of 400,000, with a grand historic centre surrounded by gritty, crime-ridden neighbourhoods. It is one of the ten most dangerous cities in the United States, and the spotlight shone on the city as a result of Castro’s actions revealed an uncomfortable scene.

Castro’s house, 2207 Seymour Avenue, was torn down last month. A clapboard building in a run down district, the scene of his crime was an area with little work and plenty of problems.

One of nine siblings born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents, Castro met his future partner Grimilda Figueroa when his family moved opposite hers in the 1980s.

But their relationship was not a successful, with Ms Figueroa’s sister claiming that “all hell broke loose” once they moved in together. Castro reportedly beat his girlfriend, breaking her nose, ribs and arm and was arrested for domestic violence and disorderly conduct in December 1993. She moved out three years later, taking their four children.

But the family problems continued.

One of Castro’s own daughters, Emily, 24, was imprisoned for 25 years in 2008 for slashing the throat of her own daughter when she broke up with the child’s father.

His son Anthony said that Castro’s house contained a series of locked rooms, which he was forbidden to enter. Another daughter, Arlene, was best friends with Miss DeJesus, and was the last person to see her before her disappearance.

Indeed, all three women knew Castro. Miss Knight, who has undisclosed learning difficulties, went to his house, lured by the promise of a puppy. Miss Berry, kidnapped a year later, accepted a lift from Castro to take her home after her shift at Burger King. Miss DeJesus also accepted a lift home from her kidnapper.

The two rooms inside his house in which the women were kept seemed the unremarkable bedrooms of young women, with Disney posters tacked to the pink walls and stuffed animals lined up on the bed.

Yet a closer look revealed 99 feet of rusted iron chains that Castro used to imprison them with, and the heavy wooden boards with which he blocked the windows. He created a makeshift alarm system, removed door knobs and installed multiple locks to prevent escape.

Jannette Gomez, 50, who often visits family and friends on the street, said Castro would park his motorcycle and red pickup truck behind the house, lock the gate and enter the house through a back door.

Occasionally, he would turn on a dim porch light, but the house was always dark, she told a local newspaper.

On the rare occasions over the decade that he brought them out of the house, Castro would disguise the women in motorcycle helmets and wigs.

In 2005, he kept the three women locked in a car in his garage to keep them hidden from a house guest and at other points stuffed dirty socks in their mouths to prevent them from screaming.

Swayed to plead guilty in return for avoiding the death penalty, he nevertheless refused to accept the weight of responsibility for his actions, even saying that “there was a lot of harmony in that home.”

“I am not a violent predator. You’re trying to make me look a monster,” he complained during the trial.

“I’m not a monster. I’m a normal person. I am just sick. I have an addiction. Alcoholics cannot control their addiction. That’s why I couldn’t control my addiction, your honour.”

He maintained that he was an excellent grandfather to five, and that his daughter with Miss Berry “would say 'My dad is the best dad in the world.’”

With jaw-dropping bravado, he claimed that he was not violent – despite a 13-page sentencing memorandum, largely drawn on diaries kept by the three victims throughout their captivity, in which prosecutors described how he tried to abort a baby Miss Knight was carrying by putting her on a diet of only tea and forcing her to perform gruelling exercises each day.

That did not work and so “the defendant punched and kicked her in the stomach, jumped on her stomach, and starved her for days to terminate the pregnancy,” prosecutors said.

He went on to keep the placenta in the refrigerator “as a memento”.

The death of the unborn child comprised only a small section of the prosecution’s description of Castro’s “disgusting and inhuman conduct”.

Yet he said: “I know what I did is wrong but I’m not a violent person. I simply kept them there without them being able to leave.”

They were found when Miss Berry bolted for freedom and called the police.

“This is our own backyard,” said Charlie Czorba, who lived on the same street. “These girls were locked up in our own backyard.”